Capt. Hampton Moore, commander of A Co. 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, and First Sgt. Jonathan Peters, hold up the company guidon and T-shirt gifted by Weaver Barkman, Vietnam veteran of A Co., 1-187th Infantry Regiment.
Photo credit: Mainstreet Clarksville submission
A Vietnam War veteran recently presented A Co. 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division with a gift.
The gift was the return of the company’s Vietnam War guidon and a physical training T-shirt from the 1960s.
Weaver Barkman, Vietnam veteran of A Co., 1-187th Infantry Regiment, recently came into possession of the old company guidon after one of his battle buddies died.
“Our training was extensive and focused,” Barkman said. “I think the 1-187th was the closest thing the Army had to an Airborne Ranger unit during that time. Our unit then changed colors from the 11th Air Assault Division to the 1st Cavalry Division in June 1965.”
Shortly thereafter the unit deployed to Vietnam from Savannah, Georgia, on the USNS Geiger, he said.
After the unit landed in An Khe, Vietnam, the soldiers earned Air Assault badges, and the unit was redesignated to the 12th Calvary Regiment and then back to the 1st Cavalry Division. Regardless of all the changes the unit experienced, Barkman said, he and his battle buddies always considered themselves part of the 1-187th Infantry Regiment.
Later that year, Barkman had several combat experiences, including the Battle of Ia Drang in November 1965. But the worst was ahead of them. On Feb. 23, 1966, the unit was ambushed by the 18th North Vietnamese Regiment and experienced heavy deaths. The unit went on to fight in Operation Lincoln, a campaign to root out North Vietnamese and Viet Cong that began Match 25, 1966 and ended April 8, 1966.
“We survived, that was the biggest battle for our company,” Barkman said. “I think I came home at the end of the summer in 1966. So, I came home and tried to live happily ever after. You know what. I never got a scratch over there. In my entire platoon, there were only two of us who didn’t get a Purple Heart.”
Barkman left the Army in 1967 and returned home to Arizona. Barkman retired as a deputy sheriff from the Pima County Sheriff’s Office in Tuscan, after 25 years of service, and in 1995, he went on to open his own business, Barkman and Associates, a private investigation and crime scene reconstruction company.
“Our company commander at Fort Benning was big into physical training; he was a world-class athlete,” Barkman said. “Back then, we had to pay for a custom-made T-shirt for PT. I kept that shirt forever. I had quite an attachment to it. It was the only shirt I had like that.”
He kept the shirt displayed in his home, and while attending the funeral of a battle buddy in 2018, Barkman was presented with the A Co., 1-187th company guidon.